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U.S. Cities Don't Make the Intelligence Cut
coondoggie writes "For the second year running, no U.S. city has made the list of the world's top Intelligent Communities of 2007, as selected by global think tank Intelligent Community Forum. The ICF selects the Intelligent Community list based on how advanced the communities are in deploying broadband, building a knowledge-based workforce, combining government and private-sector "digital inclusion," fostering innovation and marketing economic development."
According to the Intelligent Community Forum's website, Cleveland, Ohio made the Top 7 list in 2006. Even so, I still wouldn't want to live there :p
http://www.intelligentcommunity.org/displaycommon. cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=62
Someday the United States of Mexico will get with the times.
Did I miss something? I was watching American Idol.
This is not my sandwich.
As based on Broadband deployment?
Instead of basing it on say, the intelligence of the community.
But, it was part of the Pacific Telecommunications Council, so I'm sure they have an agenda somewhere.
My twitter
Canada has two finalists. PRetty good eh?
How do they judge? All my neighbors seem pretty smrt.
The ICF met and announced this list as part of the 29th annual Pacific Telecommunications Council (PTC) conference
This is a political ploy by Telecoms to push governments into subsidizing broadband. It is trolling, just like "You are not intelligent if you don't use vi/java/rails/xml/etc." We've been -1trolled.
Table-ized A.I.
Oh, curses! Our synergystic engineerification of innovationist intelligent-making just can't keep up with the likes of Dundee, Scotland!
The Intelligent Community Forum is basically rating cities on how much they consume the services of the IT people who make up the forum. Think of it as marketing for the IT 'Guild.'
It has little to do with the actual overall quality of a community in anyway except the dollar amount of the IT salaries they pay out of tax money. Though, I suppose, slashdot would be the place for this sort of thing.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Nothing to see here, move along.
There are intelligent life outside of US borders after all. I wonder how much of it is inside those borders.
And my karma can handle this.
-Is the meaning of life vanity, or is vanity the meaning of life?
Seems like usa isp's are doing only whats needed to stay competitive or whats needed to achieve larger market share.
Instead of increasing thier offerings they are speading into new areas figuring why spend more when less will do.
"The Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) is a nonprofit think tank that focuses on job creation and economic development in the broadband economy."
This is not an objective measure of how "intelligent" a community is, it's an objective measure of what broadband policies will make the global technocratic elite supporters of the institute the most money. And the "Digital Inclusiveness" blurb means "How can we get more money from taxpayers to line our pockets?"
But I'm sure they appreciate the free advertising. In fact, I would say that was worth $25,000 of free advertizing for them, which means that now Slashdot will have to register as a paid lobbyist. Oh wait, that bill was defeated.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
So IOW, if you don't fit their ideology and/or political agendae, you're not among the intelligent cities on Earth?
Not a very intelligent way to measure intelligence, is it?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
How typical: you pick what criteria you think are important, define them as "intelligence", and then determine that everybody else is less intelligent than you are.
When it happens at a conference, it's just back-slapping. Scale it up and its racism and then genocide.
Whatever, guys. As long as you stop short of the genocide I really don't care what you think.
You are exactly correct. While the rate on certain things, they have not weighted various aspects of providing or consuming those services. This lack of weighting just makes the report a set of statistics that should be ignored for the most part.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
That's the reason I moved to the US from France. I wanted to be surrounded by intelligent individuals. Give me intelligent individuals over intelligent planning and intelligent leaders any day.
Yeah, right, what a surprise... I've heard a rumour that large majority of americans actually believe in god(!), and even that in some states one can't hold a public office if they are atheist. We've done away with that in europe few hundred years ago.
... but watching youtube makes you intelligent. Yup, broadband as an intelligence measure beats all those dumb ink blot tests.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
For a such tiny nation Scotland still does a lot for the world in terms of providing world firsts and educational achievements. Go Scotland!
Like most government programs, they start out with nice intentions but fail terribly when implemented. The US doesn't have an education service. Maybe we have a mandatory babysitting service, or perhaps a temporary incarceration service, or even a parent/youth entertainment service, but not an education service. The thing that is most sickening though is that no matter how badly education coerced at other peoples expense fails, ther are sill mobs who cling to the concept as if their very life depended on it. It's like communisim, even after the murder of 100 million people, ther are still people who cling to this failed ideology. These people are sick, just sickening.
I wasn't really surprised to see Tallinn, Estonia on the list. I went to Tallinn back in '97. Now, personally, I don't care for the friggin' cold places like that (Estonia is within swimming distance of Finland, if you happen to be a seal). Back in '97, and keep in mind, this was only 6 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Estonia was kicking our butts in cell phone technology. What is wrong with the U.S. that this little former Soviet republic in such a short time just started beating our pants off technologically. Granted, they got a lot of help from Finland (their languages are very similar and there's some history between the two). Good for them for improving their lot in life significantly. Too bad people in the U.S. aren't very concerned about improving their own lot in life. If they were, maybe they'd elect a president who was concerned with their lot in life as well.
That's nothing that a few nukes can't solve.
-Dave
The ICF should be looking in Eureka, everyone knows that!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Firstly, this study is based on a bunch of arbitrary points of evaluation. They could have as easily decided a cities intelligence based on the number of car accidents or the number of fire hydrants.
I'd like to see a study that shows which cities have the most number of universities and the number of successful startups and successful large companies in it.
How about which cities have the highest number of employed people with degrees...
I can think of a lot of ways to measure a cities intelligence, however measuring their broadband penetration isn't one of them.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
How typical: you pick what criteria you think are important, define them as "intelligence", and then determine that everybody else is less intelligent than you are. Whatever, guys. As long as you stop short of the genocide I really don't care what you think.
(squints eyes)... With all that smart talk, I bet you're that guy in the funny pajamas that broke my house. I bet you don't even have your tattoo either.
I have a feeling I'll be seeing you on the next Monday Night Rehabilitation.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
you so fucking fail it!
... by a prevalence of posts from Americans who assert that this evaluation is obviously biased and does not reflect accuracy.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
compared to the rest of the involved countries i would say thats a pretty poor showing considering the UK and Canada has 2 nominations and has a fraction of the population and probably a lot less than 19,000 cities
...so that their city's average intelligence rating goes up.
"We have exactly as much freedom as we are willing to demand and as we can defend."
It's sad to see the US fall so far behind in the category of meaningless buzzwords. I remember when we were the dynamic nexus of vocabulatory synergistics.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Does this mean that anyone who posts from a U.S. IP will now automatically obtain a '-1, Dumbass' moderation to all posts? What a revelation!
before broadband was invented?
I agree. If anyone else does, tag the article "uselessmetric" .
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
You know, I've been to Tallinn; I'm not going to be getting jealous of this list just yet.
sic transit gloria mundi
...they didn't go to Paramus, New Jersey
You some kinda' Europeon fancy-pantsy girly man?
:]
Us regular folk been watching "Ow! My balls!"
We're too busy banging our heads with bibles over here. You don't need broadband when you have gay hating Jesus on your side.
Is it based in France per chance?
"We've come to this planet looking for intelligent life. Oops, we made a mistake."
Sorry, anyone who thinks that Cleveland is the most "intelligent" city in the U.S....probably lives in Cleveland. I'm sure there are some intelligent people there, but my experience (20 years of it) was that it was a mostly-dead rust belt city full of drunks and young people who just wanted to move to new york, la, or san francisco. The only other city on this list that I've been to is the ontario area, which, while decent, was far from one of the most "intelligent" cities. How many of these "intelligent" cities have fostered innovative new companies in the last century? How many play host to world class universities? More innovative products come out every year from cities like Tokyo and New York than all the other cities on the list combined. What a stupid article.
That's a shame, I was certain Woodbine would make it!
DOH!!!
Causally related, but the topic was introduced by a troll, so I prefer to reintroduce it more seriously... The topic is the problems with public education in the States as a contributing factor to the decline of America.
Public education works fine in many countries--the ones that take the future seriously enough. Mostly that means funding the public education system with a better economic model than property taxes and bond-based borrowing. Educating your citizens is a great investment and those educated citizens become great assets for any civilization above hunting and gathering. Well, actually even the hunters and gatherers can benefit from knowledge of what to hunt and what not to gather, but they're too busy trying to stay alive to worry about public schools.
My own experiences are with the American and Japanese public education systems. Just to deal with the easy topic first, the Japanese education system is quite good, and the bulk of it is public. The main distortions are in the private senior high schools and the cram schools. However, before you start crying about the relatively minor imperfections (compared to the present state of American public education), you better remember the Japanese educational system was to a great degree patterned on American models, both in Meiji times and again after the war. (And yes, I know Japan didn't have a winner this year, either, but it's the data point I have. However, that mostly disproves the OT's (Original Troll's) point blaming public education.)
For the American system, my experience is much more complicated. At the low levels I was in extremely good public schools through high school--but in a district that was one of the richest in the country at the time. I think we were No.2 for the entire nation on a per/student basis. Just an accident that the entire large area had been zoned residential, and those residential property taxes were being collected, but it was mostly vacant lots. Over the years the houses got built, the students arrived, the per/student money dropped to an average level, and the public schools dropped too. It's not the case that money always makes a difference, but it certainly is a major influence, and many of my important school experiences would not have happened except that my schools had the money at that time. That point is reinforced by my experience at one of the richest public universities, which was an awful school. My other degree was from a smaller private university that I regard as vastly superior to the enormous state school. Money isn't enough to counteract a staunchly conservative educational philosophy dedicated to forcing the students into the smallest possible mental boxes.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Just wait until the electronic voting machines, network printers, traffic signals, home servers, etc. all link up via Wifi and become sentient. Then we will have intelligent cities.
The criteria that needs to be met for a city to be considered "intelligent" seems more like criteria that would need to be met to be considered "advanced." Last I checked, broadband, "digital inclusion," etc... have nothing to do with intelligence -- just technological advancement and modernity.
They don't pee there, anymore! They just stop peeing.
Sounds like somebody has been watching "idiocracy" a wee bit too much. A whole lot of geniuses have come out of the middle of nowhere... even places without, gasp, broadband. I mean, have you ever been to Dundee? It makes Edinburgh look like New York City in comparison.
The PTC conference, which had 4,000 attendees, features information and communications technologies, public policy initiatives, business development strategies and industry forecasts from an Asia Pacific point of view.
Well, at least they're clearly stating that they wish to act in the interests of offshoring, specifically to places that are friendly to worker abuse or areas that intend to treat businesses as godly entities.
The glut of fiber capacity led to plummeting prices . just at the time when developing nations like India and China opened their economies to global competition and the nations of Eastern Europe moved into the orbit of the European Community.
Competitive does not mean "hand every advantage to Asia". That includes everything from offshoring to making the problem worse by not adopting a policy of no-nonsense, universal admission for citizens seeking higher education- getting our own house in order before accepting any guests. If the immigrants want to take university spots, fine - just have them in service to the citizens.
I'd hardly call China's economy open given the hurdles it puts on foreign investment yet flooding nations with low quality manufacturing. That means not falling on your own sword on for the sake of prosperity, nor doing so if asked.
The near-term result was the explosion of offshoring, as companies in industrialized nations found they could find highly qualified suppliers of services in countries where prevailing wages were a fraction of those in their home markets.
Industrial Metamorphosis: factory jobs are becoming scarce. It's nothing to worry about.
Well, it's not like they're hiding they're cards on this one - they assume a very myopic view that prosperity can come out of globalization even if they avoid working on solutions with the displaced on the displaced's terms. Unfortunately, that's opposite of what will have to happen in the Midwest if they're going to get any traction greater than spinning wheels on ice. Otherwise they'll be seeing more pitchforks and less cooperation.
The Populist Myths on Income Inequality - NY Times Sept 7 06
Apparently they think a bit highly of places known for their populism - I didnt know states like Ohio and Michigan were a large bunch of "university towns" disconnected from reality. The only disconnection that's provable is one from prosperity. Get that Harvardite in that article a 2 week visit across the Rust Belt, maybe it'll give him a more informed opinion.
According to the Intelligent Community Forum's website, Cleveland, Ohio made the Top 7 list in 2006
Somehow I think this was a token gesture and not a serious inclusion given they hold Ohio highly in no other light. Get a CCW permit, learn how to use that weapon, and Cleveland's quite fine. For education, you'd be better to avoid places in Ohio that dont try to have a prestige policy for admission for 4 year universities. That also includes Ohio State, which receives government funds yet also acts like it is CWRU Columbus.
In short, this group is indistinguishable from the ITAA and its kind.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I call anti-US bias bullshit. No city in the Silicon Valley area has good connectivity or an information based workforce!? Pah.
Sometimes at night I imagine the darkness is filled with horrible things with too many teeth, like Julia Roberts.
The ICF selects the Intelligent Community list based on how advanced the communities are in deploying broadband, building a knowledge-based workforce, combining government and private-sector "digital inclusion," fostering innovation and marketing economic development.
Could have chosen a better name, couldn't they?
Oh well, I guess we'll need to put away our 'Americans r dumb' jokes for now.
Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
How did anyone give this guy Score:4, Insightful? Doesn't anyone here know about Babbage, Wang, or Lee? Honestly, the US dudes need to look into their history to see how so many nations have contributed (outwith the stuff that was outright stolen - research into aeronautics especially) to their success.
Willisville, Arkansas didn't make the list? That just ain't right, dagnabbit!
Sorry for the rant...let me get back to watching American Idol and voting Republican.
They're announcing the most "intelligent" city in New York.
Gah
Where's the list of the world's dumbest cities? I'd like to move to one of them and use my moderate intelligence to take over.
Most americans still believe that Al Gore won the 2000 election! Despite the fact that Bush was getting more votes and i believe that they didn't even get to the overseas votes in Florida! Makes me want to laugh.
Is that the US has a great wire based communication system whereas often nations with great cellular service don't. You can get a wired phone line basically anywhere for rather cheap. That phone line is going to be highly reliable and connected. Thus there's less need for replacing it with something new. I'm not saying cellular offers no advantages, I'm just saying there's no pressing need. Land lines work. However in many nations that's not the case, they never rolled out good wire infrastructure. Mass wireless deployment often makes a lot of sense then. Not only is it newer technology, but it's often cheaper. If you don't have the wire run, it can be real, real expensive to do so.
It's not the only reason that the US has less cellphones than many nations, but it is an important one. When you can get a cheap land line, you may not care so much about a cellphone.
Who funds the ICF?
From the article the two cities are : "Ottawa-Gatineau, Ontario-Quebec, Canada" and "Waterloo, Ontario, Canada" The problem with that is that Ottawa and Gatineau are two different cities... See Ottawa and Gatineau. I guess that Michaëlle Jean did put the two solitudes together then!
No sig for now.
Yes, because it's currently using your upper lip for toilet paper.
The moment you hear terms like "digital inclusion" - and Ottawa is listed as a "great city" by any measure (and Ottawa is my hometown and current residence, but Ottawa is a fetid shithole that most people escape from when they turn 18) - then you know the whole thing is a bullshit waste of money.
In all fairness, though, Waterloo deserves any kudos it gets, even from a source as questionable as this one. Waterloo is a great city.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
I can think of a lot of ways to measure a cities intelligence, however measuring their broadband penetration isn't one of them.
Broadband penetration is a good thing and worthy of points in the city's favor. ANY Internet access is worthy of points. However, far more important is counting the number of lottery tickets sold in the city. If it's greater than 100, deduct all points for universities or broadband penetration. People who buy stuff advertised in spam should be cause for castration of the entire population of that city.
Now, I'm currently stuck back living in Ottawa (which I utterly detest despite being my "home town"), and there are lottery kiosks all over the place, probably more than 100 of them in the city, to say nothing of tickets sold. Therefore, these people don't know basic math. Therefore, nix all points for broadband penetration or the three universities and (seven? eight?) colleges in the city.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Thanks, dumbasses.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
I really liked what I saw in that documentry by George Lucas about Cleveland. Is Cherry Bomb still playing the local clubs?
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
Yes, and Europe is the same. Just look at their advanced mathematics. It was all stolen from India.
There's a lot more educational content on YouTube than you'll ever find on most American TV channels.
As a percentage, I would not be so sure - consider broadcast channels alone, you have PBS and basically, everything else.
Now think that for every YouTube video teaching latin there are probably about 10k videos of people taking hits to the groin.
Looking at what is popular vs. what is availiable on YouTube yields a very different conclusion than the one you come to. For those that wish it, YouTube is a great educational resource. But like any tool infused by the Power Of The Internet, it is also capible of being the ultimate BoobTube. It's basically TV amplified and magnified, and I'm not sure really all that much better or worse since it's even more a product of the viewers.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Which community can load and update MySpace pages the fastest.
Pass!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think you're ignoring the very large role that parents play in any student's academic performance. I went to school in one of the poorest school districts in the US and you still had plenty of kids going on to ivy league and comparable universities. By the same token my s.o. grew up in one of the richest school districts in the US and she knew plenty of people who dropped out of high school or didn't make it through college and even now plenty of her little sister's friends are completely under-achieving kids who have almost zero college/job prospects because they just don't give a damn.
Does going to a good/wealthy school help? Well yeah, of course, but the influence that parents can have far outshadows any other influence in a child's life (even if the parent exercises that influence by not doing a thing to educate their kids). I'd argue that the biggest difference between American and Japanese educational systems is the role that parents play in pushing their children to do well and even excell in what they do. It doesn't matter whether it's a public school or a private one, Japanese or American, rich or poor, if children's parents aren't involved and if they don't get their kids used to really working at getting a good education, everything else will go by the wayside.
Until we start making parents accountable for how their kids do in school no amount of finger pointing or creative financing is going to make a difference. That's one of the big problems I had with the whole "No Child Left Behind" system. It focuses solely on teachers/schools and how their students do on standardized tests. If a teacher can't make enough students pass they can loose their jobs, but nothing happens to a parent if they can't make their own children meet certain academic standards.
Personally, I wonder what would happen if instead of focusing on teachers, we focused on parents and made them at least partially accountable for their children. Did their child flunk an entire grade without the parent bringing the kid's problems to a tutor/teacher's attention during the course of the entire school year? Then they lose their tax deduction for that kid for that year. Is their underage kid convicted of some crime? Then they have to do some number of hours of community service in addition to whatever punishment their kid gets.
It's really sad how many people in this country make such a big deal about the importance of producing children without putting an equal emphasis on what parents do once they have the kids. Likewise, it's disturbing how much effort some parents put into indoctrinating their kids into a religion, social group, etc... without putting as much effort into educating them about basic reading/writing/arithmatic type stuff.
"The ICF selects the Intelligent Community list based on how advanced the communities are in deploying broadband, building a knowledge-based workforce, combining government and private-sector "digital inclusion," fostering innovation and marketing economic development."
Alvin, eat your heart out.
I'd say that the "building a knowledge-based workforce" criteria is a load of bull.
Currently, it is impossible to have a properly functioning city (or society for that matter) without some distribution between "knowledge-based" workers and those who work in non-"knowledge-based" fields. Just like you don't want everyone to graduate with a degree in CS, you don't want everyone to abandon necessary jobs because they're "beneath" them. For the forseeable future we're going to need janitors, mechanics, carpenters, etc... (basically most of the occupations that you'd see in a vocational school type setting) and that's a good thing because some people love doing those things. Not everyone wants to spend the majority of their waking life in cube farm under flourescent light.
The criteria that this survey used are probably some of the worst possible criteria for determining any group's "intelligence". You might as well also judge it by the number of cable/satellite channels available per home.
No it wasn't. Even Wikipedia admits that article has some serious defects. But if you really want to get things going here, we can mention how the upper caste of Indian society is pale white because the Aryans originated from Europe.
5) Lundun, Englund
4) Noo Yoik, Noo Yoik
3) Torononototo, Cananananada
2) Disney(land/world), your choice
1) Sum foren plais, hahalolp0wned
Why's it in the list? Just intrigued. It has a pretty bad reputation.
Okay, okay, I've read the page now. I originally only saw the news item with the list which didn't explain anything about the choices. But then I checked the other link and found this.
Estonia was more or less rebuilt from scratch by Nokia, Talinn is probably the most technically advanced city in Europe.
See what happens when someone responds to trolls? The OT's trollage was a typically simple-minded attack on public education, and I deliberately responded elsewhere, but I wasn't responding to the search for primary factors, but just rejecting the troll's trollage. Even when you try to ignore them, the trolls distort attempts at topical discussion, amplified on /. by the abuses of the anonymous moderation system. (Am I the only user of /. who feels bad moderation is harmful to the system? Probably about to be an ex-user of /. I've only recently returned after an 11-month hiatus, and the place has *NOT* improved.)
I would certainly agree that parental influence is much more important than the public schools. In fact, in my own case, my parents were very concerned about the quality of the public education and that was an important consideration in their decision to move to that specific school district. They knew it was (at the time) relatively wealthy. The most obvious evidence of your own point is simply that there are plenty of differences in student performance within any school, but the importance of good public schools is that they can raise the averages to the general benefit of society.
I shudder to speculate where the OT was educated--if you can call it "educated". If it was a public school, it was obviously an awful one, but I'd consider it much more likely he was home schooled by trollish parents and is now determined to sustain the family tradition.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Hmm, this phrase and the idea that access to broadband relates to intelligence reminds me of the UK government plonking computers in to schools and getting them on to the Internet because it would obviously improve things. No need to do anything else, just make sure they have the magic if IT and everything will work perfectly.
As teachers sat there wondering how on earth they can actually use the computers to make a difference, the books in the library continued to age and the holes in the roof got bigger. I get the impression that IT has become an ideology for some people as opposed to a set of tools.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
When publications cannot find any real news to report, they resort to creating "Top n List" articles as fluff material to fill up space (where n is usually ten or twenty).
Then the list itself becomes a "news" item, and is usually slopped together using unscientific criteria and unscientific methods of evaluation.
The list also becomes a vehicle for advertisement for the publication itself, as when cities mentioned in the lists will usually echo the "findings" of publication in their publicity literature. Or in this case, because the list is "provocatively" not listing any cities in the United States, a lot of people from the United States will, of course, feel that they have to defend their country, and will flock to reading the article, thus giving the publisher more business...and more incentives to slopping together more lists in the future.
In other words: "There's nothing to see here...move along...move along."
Here's a novel idea: the same content, and sometimes even better is available at your local library. Yet I don't see the number and quality of libraries mentioned in their measure of intelligence. People have been using their brains before YouTube too, you know.
;) Lots of, ahem, "educational" videos on _that_ kinda topic.
Language? I learned English from tapes and books, and then from a teacher. I got taught French by my grandma using Pif comics. You don't need a video to learn a new language, you just need to hear and read it. Even if (for whatever psychiatric reason) you're absolutely _only_ able to do it over the Internet, you don't absolutely need broadband for that: to learn to read you only need a freakin' ASCII file, and to hear it you need an MP3. Trust me, you can squeeze those even through an analog modem if you really want to, especially since you don't need to stream them in real time: you can download them in advance just as well.
Learn to play an instrument? How about getting one of the about a million books on the topic? Again, chances are your local library carries several. I know a ton of people who've learned to play the guitar without broadband.
Etc.
Plus, as the unused libraries prove, there's a heck of a difference between something being available and people actually using it. Just because a community has broadband, it doesn't mean automatically everyone starts using it to learn stuff. Except if by "learn" you mean, "my word, I didn't know a double anal penetration was even possible."
Now I'm not against broadband or anything, but measuring a community's intelligence by the available megabits per second is at best PR trolling (seeing as the "independent think tank" is actually just a lobby group to push for more subsidized broadband), and at worst genuine techo-utopian stupidity.
Even if we're to spend tax money to improve intelligence (a good idea, by all means), I'm still waiting for any study to show that broadband is the best return on investment. How about investing half that amount in improving the schools, for example? A good teacher can help more than just upgrading someone's internet connection. How about, political correctness and feel-good education be damned, someone actually make a class out of the nerdiest kids who actually want to learn? And I mean really learn stuff, not get some watered-down bullshit and "brain gym" pseudo-education.
Are kids that much more likely to learn foreign languages well on the Internet than from a teacher, for example? Really? Because so far I've seen people even forgetting whatever proper English they knew after a couple of years on MMOs. The English I could learn on, say, City of Heroes, is of the caliber of, "soz m8, g2g, got skewl 2moz". (Translation for those who aren't fluent in l33t: "sorry mate, got to go, got school tomorrow." Yeah, I know, it made me go cross-eyed trying to decode it too.) Genuine quote off one of the UK servers. No kidding. I swear to God, someone actually typed that abhomination.
There's a whole generation by now who's learned to write badly not even in the name of typing speed, but out of some idiotic notion that writing "skewl" instead of "school" is somehow cool, hip, elite, or whatever. And it's contagious. People who _are_ capable of writing proper English and typing fast enough, end up getting that idea too. I was shocked to discover that a middle-aged mid-level manager I know had started to type like that on a MMO. That's broadband intelligence for you.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Still... I can't really stop being disgusted by such PR trolling and pseudo-science. They could have called it a "top 10 high-tech cities" or whatever, and I wouldn'd have minded it. After all, that's what they really measure there.
But handwaving a "you're stupid if you don't give us lots of money" prestidigitation is lame. Real lame. Preying on some mothers' fears to sell them snake oil ("auugh, my kid will grow up dumb if the community doesn't dump all its funds into upgrading broadband"), is lame. We're already out of the realm of normal marketting, and straight into the world of con men, snake oil peddlers, and generally low lives. I'd rather not encourage them any more, God knows they breed like rabbits already.
Plus, the quality of education and the culture's slide into "being dumb is good, being a nerd is unfashionable" is already an issue by its own, and schools are underfunded and badly staffed as it is. Highjacking it for some personal "see, you should give us more money instead of giving them to the schools, if you really want to be intelligent" agenda is... I don't know, I find it as abhorrent as it gets. It's one thing to rob from the rich, Robin Hood style, and it's another to try to steal from the poor and divert money from the schools. I mean, what next? Rob an orphanage? FFS...
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
DUMBASS
Conor "You're not married,you haven't got a girlfriend and you've never seen Star Trek? Good Lord!" - Patrick Stewart
...and that is Redmond, Seattle.
There are direct and indirect indexes about certain society details which are widely adopted by census organizations and government bodies. For example, child nutrition levels are evaluated through the population's tallness, development indexes is measured through the number of bathrooms per house and, as we seen here in slashdot a while ago, some people even measure the cost of living through the iPod prices. So why wouldn't Broadband deployment be used as an intelligence index?
The demand for broadband is mainly due to people who spend a good deal of time online. Spending time online means reading and accessing information (useful stuff or not? Technical? Art? Entertainment? It doesn't matter.) and as far as I see it, that sure is a sign of intelligence.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
Well, if the intellectual hub of the cosmos, packed with giant legislative, executive and judicial brains, can't make the cut... there's obviously something wrong with the assessment system.
Come on people - this is the city where George W Bush lives and thinks!
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Was I surprised to see that nowhere in the United States made the list? More like I expected no place in the United States to make the list. Granted, I will say places like Seattle, Cleveland, and San Francisco are likely the cutting edge of tech-savvy cities in the US, but nothing like the cities mentioned on the list. Here under the good old red, white, and screwed we must constantly hear bickering people who don't want to technically evolve with the rest of the world, and it shows. I live in a community about 40 miles west of St. Louis, and due to the way the certain agreements and infrastructure is laid out, people on the north side of Interstate 70 can have digital cable, broadband cable/DSL up to 10Mbps, IP telephone service...basically all the top-end services. If you live on the south side of Interstate 70, you'd be lucky if you could even get DSL service. Issues like this are one of many as to why the United States doesn't evolve with the rest of the world. Our cars don't have emission/economy standards like the rest of the world, we will be one of the last developed countries to officially adopt digital televisions (Bush delayed until 2009 I believe), and for many people, broadband internet access is a thing of dreams. Our super-billion dollar cellular providers still can't even promise they'll have service where you live or work (advertising that you have the fewest dropped calls is still a negative point). The real trouble is, we're almost headed right back to the stone age again - AT&T has almost risen again to become Ma Bell, and this time she'll even be more of a pain because she now controls a large portion of the cellular market. I know for the next 25 years it will be a lot of beating my head into a brick wall. But it's what I've come to expect from the only remaining superpower.
Hrm.. as much as I want to root for my own city of Ottawa, I have to say that seriously jeopardizes the credibility of this popularity contest. Ottawa is hardly an intelligent city. I find most people here are mock-intelligent... aka full of shit! They don't run around screwing their cousins and building gun racks out of duck tape, but they're not going to change the world eitehr. Most people here just spend their time maximizing their federal gov't income and job security (a.k.a. moving up the ladder without doing any work), then making asses of themselves in rush hour traffic day after day.
As for broadband penetration, well yes there is a high number of people with broadband, but I'd like to think many european countries have higher speeds and less crippled ISPs than Rogers Cable and its merry band of imbeciles.
If "government/private sector digital integration" means paying gov't consultants by email so they can "work" from "home" on the 14th hole, then yes we're definitely a leader.
Hey don't get me wrong, I moved here for a reason... I like the place, but if Ottawa is on the top list, that means everyone that didn't make the list is very fucking lame!
Hey don't get me wrong, I've seen worse. After all, I moved here for a reason, but I've seen better elsewhere.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Could you enlighten little more about the connection between Nokia and Estonia? It's true that many Nokias partners and contractors moved their manufacturing businesses to Estonia and even R&D units, but if I recall correctly, Nokia itself didn't build any manufacturing or R&D units to the country.
To this day, the only place where Nokia has had very deep impact on whole society has been Finland and in here the impact has been concentrated primarily to Helsinki, Tampere and Oulu.
Survey research tool for commercial and scientific use
I can name 20 US cities that trump most of these nominees, and most of those are in the bay area of California. I won't bother to give out other nominees like Austin, TX or Portland, OR, because they are entirely too livable compared to some of the cities in that list. Cleveland is the best they could muster for the US last year? Please...
I think it is very interesting that MOST US Cities voted BLUE (for Gore then Kerry) and not RED (for Bush). I thought that those who voted for Bush were the dumb ones, according to most on slashdot. Where does that leave the ones who voted for Gore or Kerry?
Nicely done... too bad only 5-10% of the population will buy that logical idea...
He taught me how to sleep.
Latewire
It's scary viewing to see why one of the most powerful countries in the world also appears to be one of the most stupid: http://www.boreme.com/boreme/funny-2007/clever-ame ricans-p1.php
"I like to skate on the other side of the ice"
can someone pls pst summary kthx gotta go cul8r LOLOMGWTFBBQ11!11!eleventyone
The year I graduated, 10 of my classmates scored 99+ in the AGRE (Advanced GRE has been renamed since). Since 2000 people sat for that test in that batch in the entire world, 50% of the top 1% of the world resided in that Postal zone. Of course a tradegroup with an obvious vested interest spinning to equate broadband access with intelligence would not consider such measures of intelligence.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I've tracked the ICF findings for years and have yet to understand the methodology, which is utterly out of whack with what's happening in the marketplace as well as studies that drive site location decisions for data centers (my particular interest). I think the ICF reflects the perspective of a very focused constituency. It's a source of interesting case studies on community broadband deployment, but isn't anything I'd ever build a business case around.
RichM
Data Center Knowledge
Below is a not that was sent home with a child of ours. This child spoke proper
English before starting school, and now, we have to constantly have to correct
his grammar. The note comes from a person with a four year college degree.
Pre-K Parents,
This is just a reminder that students need to have break
everyday! Break includes a snack and a drink. I have a lot of
students that have not been sending break, and we have nothing to
give them, if they don't have break. Please send break daily!
This note is posted per batum. I am only a high school graduate,
yet I know how to use proper grammar. More tax money is spent
per student in the U.S. than in many other countries which have
better educational systems. I wish that we could get tax breaks
for homeschooling our children. Just remember that ignorant people
are easier to control.
I know msft controls a few of them.
Aren't think tanks just a cover for corporate PR, or political agenda?
That's an excellent point and thanks for mentioning it.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Interesting that we Canadians still think _Americans_ are arrogant when we ourselves are starting to brag so much recently. Seriously, how does it make us look to anyone else? What kind of people are they supposed to think we are?
At the Santa Clara main branch they are clearing out sections of actual paper books to make way for more audiobooks and DVDs. I wasn't too disturbed to see VHS tapes make it into the library back in the day, but's sad to see Heinlein, Clark, and Dickson being squeezed out by Matt Damon, Paris Hilton and PeeWee Herman.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
"I moved here from Canada, and they think I am a little slow, ehhh?"
Hilarious. Sad, but hilarious.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
This feels like pure Anti-American posturing. Look at New York, LA, Boston. All very smart cities, generally due to the presence of universities. I'd like to see their exact judging rubric - is it percentage based? That would explain why all of the cities are so small.
The US wants other countries' poor, "huddled masses yearning to breathe free," not your intelligent, rich hotties looking to pose nude for /.ers!
Sounds like a contradiction in terms to me.
How about "community of intelligent people"?
Naah...
Can't happen. We're talking about HUMANS here.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
How about using book sales as a metric? Giving additional weight to literature, and non-fiction.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
If Ottawa is an intelligent city I would hate to experience the traffic signal systems in other cities
I get a %5 discount at my favourite Chinese restaurant *sometimes* for speaking Chinese! (I'm white, they think it's cute)
A12A.713 is the root of ASC('evil')
Duh. You mean "verbatim". 'Nuff said.
Or were you trying to be funny?
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Actually, either one is correct. Even if it were misspelled, a typo or even two can be excused. Unlike the note, my post is not filled with errors.
Congratulations. I thought you were bluffing. Obscure, but it exists.
As regards the substance of your post, I still dismiss it. However, I confess that I don't have the highest literary expectations from teachers at the levels below elementary school.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
not smart. now this will drive you insane. insanely difficult.
Boston is the home of Harvard (in effect, its technically in the adjoining city Cambridge that is essentially a district of Boston). Boston/Cambridge is also the home of MIT, perhaps the most prestigious technical university in the world. If you include Boston University, Boston College, Tufts, Brandeis, Emerson, Bentley, Northeastern and other universities of the cities and its immediate vicinity, you're talking about literally hundreds of thousands of post-secondary students.